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It feels good to see Bill Cosby taken down. There are few people more deserving of it. For years, he has been acting self-righteous in judging others. He was the great conservative icon and father figure who was supposed to represent all that is good about the American Dream, a black man who rose up out of poverty. As part of the supposed meritocracy, he took it as his right and obligation to condemn those he left behind in poverty.

His life and popular television show expressed the social conservative values of hard work and family values. He was America’s dad, as the media liked to proclaim. Now he has fallen from grace or rather his true face has been revealed. But this is nothing new, as it follows an old pattern: Catholic priests molesting children and gay-bashing fundy preachers being caught in gay sex, Rudy Giuliani’s philandering and Donald Trump’s everything. These people aren’t aberrations to the norm and exceptions to the rule, aren’t failures of social conservatism (also, keep in mind this conservatism was never limited to the GOP, as Barack Obama no different than Cosby — both Democrats, of course — loved to bash poor blacks because of their supposed laziness and general inferiority; and don’t forget the racist dog whistle politics of our first black president, by which I mean Bill Clinton). Their two-faced morality is the norm and rule. These great men of power and celebrity, these authoritative voices and leaders represent what it meant for conservatives to have won the culture wars, and for a long time conservatives felt high and mighty, though it turned out to have been a temporary and hollow victory.

The moral depravity we’ve seen again and again is what social conservatism has always been about, alpha male authority figures swinging their dicks around (something George Carlin liked to ridicule). Deep down, conservative family values equates to the reactionary authoritarianism of patriarchy. The family, as with the rest of society, is supposed to submit to the wise father figure who knows what’s best for us and no one should be allowed to challenge him or talk back. The morality of the patriarchy was justified by power and privilege, rather than power and privilege being justified by morality. It’s the reason anti-choice activism is motivated by social control, not saving innocent lives considering conservative policies worsen women’s health and the abortion rate. Real world results that hurt actual people are irrelevant. Rich male conservatives, supported by their dick-sucking followers, always knew they were right because they felt righteous — they were in a position to force their views on others and to silence their critics, as they silenced their victims. The blatant hypocrisy of it all rubs salt into the wound.

Donald Trump was elected for the very reason that he embodies everything that the Republican Party has become. His moral depravity isn’t a minor detail overlooked by social conservatives such as evangelicals. It is precisely why they love and worship him. The more he flaunts his immoral egotism, the more his fans go wild. He shows no shame and that is taken as an inspiring example of how pure power will put feminists and liberals back in their place. The difference with Bill Cosby is that he pretended to have been different, using his claim as a moral exemplar to justify his being a moral scold. But now it has been revealed there never was any difference. Cosby and Trump are the same patriarchal archetype, proving right everything feminists have said for generations. This is what it means to make America great again, the patriarchy coming back out of hiding and damn! is it ugly when seen in the glare of open scrutiny.

Many social conservatives have stopped pretending anymore and instead have embraced this moral depravity as a point of pride, in the hope of demonstrating how much influence they still have. Trump defies all social norms of moral behavior and appears untouchable. No one can tell him what to do, just like it was in the good ol’ days when every man was supposedly a king in his own castle. But that arrogance is changing, demonstrated by the taking down of Bill Cosby. In his attacking poor blacks as being morally inferior, it should be noted that it was the rich black guy who was drugging and raping women. It turns out that wealth, ambition, and success aren’t signs from God that you are one of the divine elect. Maybe the same morality that applies to the rest of us also applies to the rich and powerful. Maybe they aren’t above the law, after all. Maybe they aren’t untouchable.

Here is my simple prayer. May Bill Cosby rot in prison and die in shame. And may the likes of Donald Trump be next for the chopping block. As for women and all others who are also rich and powerful assholes in both political parties, whether serving the patriarchy or pretending not to, we will be coming for you soon. Be patient. The moral arc of history is bending back around.

* * *

My criticisms here aren’t a response to mere moral failure. Most of us to varying degrees fail our own stated moral standards. But there is a difference. Not all of us hold ourselves up as morally righteous and superior to our fellow humans. Moral failure is commonplace, although the levels of moral failure seen with the likes of Bill Cosby exist on an entirely different sphere of outright moral depravity. That is the difference that makes a difference. Cosby’s outward righteousness was precisely correlated to his hidden depravity.

Let me share a comparable example, even if only comparable in that it is another celebrity caught up in the #MeToo movement. On far lesser accusations, Louis C.K. was brought down low and deserved it to some extent. But here is what was very much unlike the Cosby case. First, his moral depravity was much less depraved. Second, he immediately admitted to his wrongdoing and then gave a heartfelt apology. And, last but not least, he never held himself up as better than others, if anything doing the opposite in making fun of himself as a pathetic loser.

Humility can go a long way in life. I can be a righteous asshole at times. Even so, I know I’m not morally superior to others. I regularly admit to my own personal failures. All of us are imperfect in varying ways as we are all fallible humans. There is nothing wrong with that. Keeping one’s ego tamped down with humility is probably the best way of avoiding the worst forms of moral depravity. The point isn’t about being morally perfect or necessarily even coming close. The simple truth is that, the higher are the moral standards we hold, the greater will be our falling short. But that is better than lowering one’s standards so far down that they are easy to meet without effort. Or worse still, you could go the route of Trump and have no standards at all by simply embracing depravity as a way of life.

Writing this was a cathartic experience. I really am not in a position to be morally righteous, even as I’m deeply moved by a moral outrage that implicates us all in our societal failure. No one should be following my example, other than maybe in my willingness to be a truth-teller. My few moral strengths are worthy, I suppose. I try my best, which admittedly is limited. Still, I don’t feel better in seeing others brought down low, although I do feel wonderful knowing that justice is occasionally served. Justice can seem so rare that it’s a breath of fresh air when it does happen. For all the problems with the #MeToo movement, it has forced much needed change. And it was the victims that forced that change, which is how it should be.

I came across some new information that relates to some information I’m already familiar with to some degree. I’d like to look more into it, but for now I just wanted to offer a few links to orient my thinking.

It was in researching about the North/South in some earlier posts that I came across the folkways theory of American culture first presented in a book by David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America. That gave me a very important framework in understanding differences that I had sensed in my own personal experiences and observations.

I also noticed another article linked. It is about the difference in marriage practices among blue and red state populations. This is data I’ve come across before, but the authors offer an interesting explanation for the causes and an interesting analysis about the results. Here it is (by a different author):

Do ‘Family Values’ Weaken Families?
If you want to find stable two-parent families, bypass Palin country and go to Pelosi territory.
by Jonathan Rauch on Saturday, May 1, 2010

I didn’t intend to have a second part, but I wanted to add more context for the ideas in question… which led to further thoughts. Some of the context of my thoughts is personal and I originally decided to leave out the personal for various reasons. Sometimes I prefer discussing ideas on their own merit. Also, I’m usually a bit reluctant to bring up certain personal experiences and observations, especially when they involve others.

The personal context I’m going to discuss relates to various families I’ve known over the years. I’m not, for the most part, going to speak about the details of specific examples and I won’t name specific people (but if you know me well enough, you might be able to guess). I’m going to take these specific examples and combine them so as to characterize similarities and dissimilarities between two general categories of family. These two categories are essentially conservative vs liberal (in the social, not political, sense), but I’m not theoretically generalizing about all conservative families and all liberal families. The examples I’m drawing from are limited to my experience of growing up as a middle class white person and so the families I’m considering are also middle class white families. Another similarity is that all or most of the these families were Christian… which is typical for the US. The main difference is that some of the families are from the South and some from the Midwest (which isn’t what divides the conservative and liberal families).

The main inspiration of my thoughts here is my having read George Lakoff’s book Moral Politics. In it, Lakoff discusses the conservative Strict Father family model and the liberal Nurturant Parent family model. Lakoff extends these models into the political sphere, but I won’t be doing that. As Lakoff points out, some people might use one model for one area of their life and use the other model for another area of life. For my purpose here, it doesn’t matter how respective families may vote or how they may otherwise act outside of the family. In case you’re interested, one of the “liberal” families I’m referencing has lived in the South for generations and so I wouldn’t be surprised if they voted Republican. I consider them liberal in terms of their parenting style (i.e., Lakoff’s Nurturant Parent). If you feel confused by what is meant by Lakoff’s labels, there is plenty of info that can be found on the web describing these parenting models (including some videos of Lakoff explaining it). To give a simplistic explanation, conservative parents emphasize their own authority (and emphasize punishment when their authority isn’t respected/obeyed) and liberal parents emphasize a more informal, egalitarian relationship to their children (and emphasize explaining to a child what they did wrong).

I should add that the types I’m going to describe only indirectly relate to Lakoff’s model. In a sense, I’ll be describing two sub-types (hopefully not stereotypes) that I’m familiar with (which may or may not fit the experience of others). So, there is a definite limitation to my following analysis. Like everyone, I’m biased by my own family experiences (my parents mostly parented according to Strict Father morality but they had some Nurturant Parent tendencies) and my own socio-political preferences (moderate liberalism with leanings towards civil libertarianism, socialism, and anarchism). I’m not claiming to be perfectly objective, but I am striving to gain understanding beyond mere subjective opinion.

For certain, this isn’t a fair comparison, but the unfairness of my making these two specific categories is simply based on what I’ve observed. Life itself is unfair. The two types of family I’m considering are of parents who seem to have had very different experiences themselves growing up. The conservative examples I’m drawing from grew up in what I’d consider (as a liberal) to be marginally dysfunctional families, either severely Strict Father households (with strict punishments) or else broken families (such as divorce). This doesn’t, however, mean these parents considered their own upbringing as having been dysfunctional or that these parents would necessarily see this as the motivating factor of their having used the Strict Father model for their own children. As for my examples of liberal parents, I also can’t comment on their perceptions of how they were treated growing up by their own parents. All that I can say about these two types of parents is that the liberal parents seemed to have maintained a closer relationship with their own parents… which I think is a telling detail.

Let me give further details.

The liberal parents I speak of remained in the same town, community, or region they grew up in. So, extended family lived nearby and were seen regularly by the children of these liberal parents (informal visits, holiday gatherings, family reunions, etc). The liberal parents’ children grew up in a more stable environment. They lived in the same neighborhood their whole life or maybe moved some distance within the same community. They grew up with the same neighbors and the children of neighbors. They grew up in the same school system and knew the same kids their whole lives. They went to the same church from childhood to adulthood.

Once upon a time, almost all families would’ve fit the description of my liberal family examples. Our society, however, has become increasingly mobile. The conservative parents in my sample moved around more… maybe because they didn’t want to remain in the same area that their own parents (and extended families) lived… or maybe because the parents thought it was part of their responsibility to be successful in their careers. Obviously, this led the children of these parents to have a less stable upbringing. I think this is very important since for most of human civilization people didn’t move around much. A mobile society is quite the social experiment. For whatever reason, the conservative parents in my sample were more willing to embrace this social experiment. I really don’t know what to make of this. I don’t see any reason why Strict Father parents might on average be more likely to move around than Nurturant Parent families. I couldn’t say why this pattern exists in the families with which I’m personally familiar (and I understand that my sampling is hardly representative).

I could point out a few possible reasons. In the US, conservative family values are defined in terms of the nuclear family. I was reading something recently (I can’t recall the source) of how these nuclear family values seem to be an extension of American individualism. Conservatives, in particular, believe in individual responsibility and, from the conservative perspective, the nuclear family is an extension of the individual’s responsibility. This focus on the nuclear family has the unintended consequence of undermining the importance of extended family and of community in general. Another possibility is that conservatives are attracted to the ideal of fiscal responsibility (of course, related to individual responsibility) and conservatives seem to have more respect for those who are highly successful in the business world (a sign of individual success and hence moral fitness/superiority). Does this lead to at least a certain type of conservative to be more willing to sacrifice other aspects of their lives (such as extended family and community) for the sake of career? Or could it be that parents with less social stability caused by moving around (meaning less family, friends, and neighbors to rely upon) are more likely to emphasize a stricter parenting style in response? My intuitive sense leans toward the latter.

Let me briefly explain my why I suspect the latter.

I was recently having a discussion with a friend about Lakoff’s book. He reminded me of the book Continuum Concept by Jean Liedloff which is a book I’m somewhat familiar with. Liedloff shares her observations of tribal child rearing and it’s very different than what one might expect. Despite all the dangers, tribal parents as described by Liedloff seem fairly tolerant and trusting. It makes sense once you understand. To a tribal child, there are always adults and older children around. Tribal people don’t have jobs to go to. If they have work to do, they either bring their kids with them or leave them with someone else. Children are raised by the entire tribe. There is no need for strict rules about everyday behavior when there are so many people around to supervise. This less strict (i.e., liberal) parenting style is most easily re-created in the modern world with families that have remained in the same community for multiple generations (especially if the community is small and close-knit and/or if extended family has remained nearby). It’s only natural that parents without others to offer daily support will feel a need to rely upon more strict parenting to ensure children behave even when no adults are around.

However, as Lakoff points out, there are many reasons for why parents choose a particular parenting style. Some of these reasons are purely ideological. Also, I definitely think ideological tendencies are based in psychological attitudes that may relate to inheritable genetic predispositions. As for my samples, I can’t know the specific causes and motivations. Anyways, the reasons behind all of this are secondary, for my original intent, to the results. The real measure of liberal vs conservative parenting are the families themselves, specifically in how they relate to each other.

Let me give a specific example.

In one of the conservative families, the parents are critical of those who have personal problems. Such things as poverty and addiction are seen as signs of potential moral inferiority (a typical conservative attitude). Lakoff describes this in terms of the conservative notion of moral essence. Outward behaviors or lifestyles are seen as manifestations of an inherent character that each person possesses (hence, the reason why some conservatives value career so highly). This is the judgment that was behind Reagan’s allegation of poor black women as being “Welfare Queens”. So, one of these conservative parents critcized some other parents (I believe they were part of the extended family) for having let their grown son live at home. This grown son was, as I recall, a schizophrenic and drug addict. From the conservative viewpoint, these other parents were contributing to and supporting the grown son’s immoral behavior. I doubt this conservative was blaming the person for having schizophrenia, but it would seem that this conservative didn’t think the schizophrenic was doing enough to improve his life. If he had been in a drug rehabilitation program, the conservative’s judgment probably would’ve been different. For many conservatives, drug addiction is one of the worst possible sins because it’s both immoral and illegal (meaning all around irresponsible).

Let me compare that to one of the liberal families who has a grown son living at home. This grown son is an alcoholic, but otherwise has no problems and holds down a job. He still lives at home because he often needs to be given rides. His dad worries that if he didn’t live at home he might get in trouble or hurt himself trying to get home after drinking. These liberal parents are very protective and the conservative parents would say that the liberal parents are simply protecting the grown son from the real world consequences of his actions.

This is the part that relates back to the previous post which I linked at the beginning of this post.

The essential difference here seems to be how social indebtedness is perceived. The liberal parents believe family is obligated to each other and that such obligation doesn’t need to be morally earned. The conservative parents believe in necessity of morally earning what are perceived as moral rewards. I pointed out in the other post, h0wever, that hierarchical nature of conservative views on authority translates as this moral earning only working in one direction: from child to parent and not from parent to child. The conservative view is that the child is obligated to the parent without the parent needing to have earned it. I find this odd. The child of conservative parents can’t be sure he can rely upon his own parents to be there if he has personal troubles, in particular if those personal troubles are perceived as somehow failing the parents’ moral standards. The conservative parents would be confused, though, if the grown child later on didn’t act obligingly in taking care of the parents when they need help (such as when they grow old).

The question I wonder is: How many conservative parents would actually follow through on their own ideological values? It’s easy for a conservative parent to criticize the moral failings of other parents. But would they refuse to help their own child even if they perceive their child as having caused his own problems? It’s a genuine conflict. If they did help their child despite their own moral values, their actions would be hypocritical. Or is this hypocritical? Maybe there is a greater value at stake that trumps the conservative’s normal mode of righteous judgment. Maybe some conservative parents could realize, at least in the moment of genuine need, that their own love for their child means more to them than the family values their minister has preached about at church. The significant point is that such a situation is a conflict in the first place for conservative parents. For liberal parents, there is far less sense of conflict between enforcing moral standards and loving their child because the liberal parents are less likely to have as strict of an attitude about morality.

My personal assessment, of course, is that I side with the attitude of the liberal parents. The liberal families I’m thinking of are much closer and they seem more forgiving of each other’s imperfections. Also, they seem more willing to help eachother out on a regular basis. In conservative families, on the other hand, there is more conflict and more grudges. Among these, who wouldn’t want to belong to the liberal families? It’s not that the liberals are perfect, but that the imperfections become less of an issue. One factor that might relate to this is the general attitude towards ideology. The liberal families seem to be less overtly ideological in the sense that they don’t discuss or argue about ideology much. The liberal families spend time together simply enjoying each other’s company: cooking and eating, drinking, playing games, light conversation, etc.

I’m sure that there exists examples of happy and loving conservative families, but I just don’t personally know of them. Even so, I wouldn’t try to separate these families on the basis of measuring which parents are the most loving. I imagine that most parents perceive themselves as loving. There is some factor here, though, that does relate to love or rather the child’s experience of being loved. The conservative parents seem more formal in general. I know that one of the conservative families sat down to eat and pray together which none of the liberal families did. One of the liberal families had such an informal household that it was often chaotic. There usually was no sitting down together except to watch tv. As I recall, all of the liberal parents mostly let their kids do their own thing without a lot of rules and chores. None of the liberal parents were the type to ground their kids for breaking rules as the conservative parents did. I will say that the children of one set of conservative parents were maybe better behaved in some ways, but I can’t say they were overall better and I can’t say they necessarily turned out better when they grew up. The children of the liberal parents all went to college and all have jobs. Generally speaking, the liberal families just seem closer even to this day (more than a decade after their children graduated from high school). I can’t say that means they love each other more, but closeness certainly does seem like a necessary element of familial love.

As I come to my concluding comments, let me point out one of my other biases which isn’t mine alone.

I’m a member of Generation X and I suppose I’m typical in my cynicism about my elders and about my own parents. GenXers are known for having been raised in broken families with absentee parents (but none of the parents in my sample were divorced). In general, the parents of GenXers (Silents and Boomers) have been known for their relaxed parenting style (by which I mean absentee parenting and not necessarilly liberal). GenXers have been called latchkey kids because our parents weren’t around much. The 70s and 80s were not kid-friendly times, but more important was the fact that many parents were, unlike previous generations, strongly focused on their careers to the detriment of family. Many GenX children had both parents working. It was normal for GenX children to come home to empty houses and parents typically didn’t know where their kids were after school. Parents in a two job household are busy and distracted parents. My own parents weren’t horrible parents, but they fit much of the pattern of the parents of my generation. I’m trying to sift through my generation’s childhood and separate the good from the bad.

Interestingly, the liberal families I’ve been discussing only had one parent working (or at least only one parent working a normal job that took them outside of the home). In one of these liberal families, the stay-at-home parent was the complete opposite of strict and also he had some psychological issues which caused him to not be as responsible as he otherwise might have been, but nonetheless he was always around and he spent a lot of time with his children. So, that is a big difference. The children of all these liberal parents grew up with a parent who was usually around and available. This is where I speculate that the conservative families that had two working parents felt a need to be more strict about rules for the very reason they were around less. The question is why did they choose to both work. The liberal families I’m speaking of most definitely weren’t wealthy and I have no doubt they could’ve used a second income. Maybe it’s easier to have only one parent working if you never move from the community (of family, friends, and neighbors) that you were raised in. So, the question then is: Why did the conservative parents choose to leave their childhood communities in order to seek careers that forced them to travel or else why did they choose a lifestyle of moving that required particular types of careers?

I’m of the opinion that Generation X has been more impacted by a less stable upbringing than any generation before. I’d say this impacted the children of both conservative and liberal families, but in the examples I’m familiar with this social instability had greater impact on the children of the conservative parents. Even though society itself was less kid-friendly when GenXers were growing up, the children of these liberal parents maybe had relatively more stability than most GenX children (it helped that none of the families in my sample lived below the poverty line). It’s understandable to an extent that young parents starting out in life don’t realize they are experimenting on their children. When the parents of GenXers themselves were children, they grew up at a time when stable communities were still intact to a large degreee. In the 50s and 60s, many communities were still very healthy and the downtowns were still economically viable. At that time, factories were being put up all over the place. Times were good and society was optimistic. So, these parents can’t easily understand the very different world that GenXers grew up in. This is equally true for conservative as well as liberal parents.

I’m not necessarily arguing that one group is inherently superior in all ways. Neither type of parent could possibly guess the long term results of their lifestyles and their parenting styles. Ultimately, maybe it doesn’t matter. Results are results. As I see it, the liberal parents I know of seem to have had better results. I can’t base any final conclusions on such limited observations, but I do think the comparisons I’ve made do illuminate important differences. In understanding Lakoff’s theory in the context of my personal observations, I feel confident that at least some of these perceived differences are directly correlated to the parenting styles.

On a more personal note, I must admit I feel less forgiving toward the conservative parents. Doing this comparison, I can see failings in all of the parents, whether conservative or liberal. Nonetheless, there is a difference that matters and this difference goes beyond even results. The conservative parents seem more righteous in their family values and more judgmental of the parenting style of others. Because of this, I think that their righteous judgment should be turned back towards their own failings. Even if the results (and failings) were equal, liberal parents invite forgiveness in their having a more forgiving attitude towards others and the conservative parents invite judgment in having a more judgmental attitude towards others. So, if the liberal parents taught their children anything worthy it is this attitude of acceptance and understanding. Even if the conservative parents were somehow absolutely right, how would their righteousness serve their children well and serve society in general well?

My criticisms here are partly self-criticisms. I’m not a parent and I don’t want to be. I can be quite righteously judgmental at times. This tendency in me doesn’t encourage a happy outlook nor happy relationships. For this reason (among others), I’m glad I’m not a parent. I wouldn’t want to pass on to my (hypothetical) children my own failings.

I think that you have written an excellent article on the evolution of religion and one that I enjoyed,

I am an evangelical fundamentalist who takes the Bible as the inspired word of God as He is revealed in the scriptures. That leads me to treat all men with tolerance and to know that I do not hold all the answers.

I find that the one truth in the Bible that holds the most hope for the future is that of the need for strong families. Using grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles and the like as role models grounded in faith will solve a number of problems in our nation.

A feeling of family as opposed to a feeling of “I” will make abortion, gay marriage and other questions not so polarizing.

Thank you again for a wonderful read.

— Tom

What stood out to me is that this belief is based on a hope rather than on any facts. A simple perusal of demographic data shows that the Bible Belt is one of the highest concentrations of immoral behavior. Many have pointed out (including myself in several other posts) that there is no clear correlation between ideological moralizing and moral behavior, and my guess is that the more ideological the moralizing the less moral the behavior..

Specifically, the emphasis on family caught my attention with the above comment.

Boomers are known as the Me generation which is largely true, but this misses the larger view. Their youthful transgressions of “immoral” behavior (drugs, free love, etc.) led to a backlash, but the backlash came from within the Boomer generation and not outside of it. The Boomers did two things: (1) they focused their self-interest towards money and materialism instead of mere pleasure and freedom, (2) they supported a major uprising of the Evangelical Right. Before the Boomers, the GOP was the party of civil rights (e.g., Marin Luther King, jr.) and Evangelism was the religious movement of civil rights. But with Reagan GOP became the party of big business and Evangelical Christianity became righteously ethnocentric. An ideological shift happened in politics and the Boomers added a dimension of ideological polarization. This strange Boomer-caused phenomenon lasted for almost a half century.

However, we are now again at the beginning of a new era. Supposedly, GenXers are more focused on family and are more conservative than Boomers, but GenXers are less ideologically divisive. Also, an even larger generation (the Millennials) is taking the stage, and they’re even more different than Boomers. On measurements of moral behavior, they tend toward the lowest numbers that have been seen in a long time. They are conservative in certain ways including a focus on family, but at the same time they’re extremely socailly liberal.

My basic point is that society is re-focusing on the value of family on personal rather than ideological terms, but this re-focusing is going against the ideological grain of fundamentalist “family values”. Millennials embrace both the importance of family and the importance of civil rights issues such as gay marriage. Suck on that fundamentalists!